


Memory in the Moment

by charmandhex



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon-typical language, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magnulia is background to the Magnus and Lucretia interactions, Post-Canon, Spoilers for Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-16 02:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20168800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmandhex/pseuds/charmandhex
Summary: When Craftsmen’s Corridor fell, much of Raven’s Roost was destroyed along with it. Three months earlier, when Magnus and Julia had gotten married, there had been an unexpected, uninvited, and unnoticed guest. Now, with memories recovered and Raven’s Roost rising once more, Lucretia has one more secret to tell Magnus.





	Memory in the Moment

**Author's Note:**

> I do not consent to having my work hosted on any unofficial apps, particularly those with ad revenue or subscription services.

Magnus is hard at work rebuilding Raven’s Roost when Lucretia arrives. He pauses in his work long enough to wave before returning, striking each nail home with three rhythmic strikes. Lucretia waits at the path near Magnus’s front door, holding a large, thin, wrapped rectangular package. Magnus might have a few ideas about what that is.

With the final nail embedded in the wood and the sweat wiped from his brow and ‘burns, Magnus heads back to his house, greeting Lucretia with a broad grin and an open door. Well, that, and fresh lemonade with some pastries from Lup. He is rustically hospitable after all, and Lucretia is family.

For all that though, she seems nervous, tense in a way Magnus doesn’t think he’s seen since before the Day. While his own glass has been refilled already, a testament to his hard work, Lucretia’s glass of lemonade is still full, with beads of condensation already formed on the exterior and dripping down the side to pool on the table. The resulting puddle is already starting to creep out toward the plate with the equally untouched baklava from Lup. Instead, Lucretia is drumming her fingers against the solid wooden table Magnus had of course built himself, and she’s looking out the window of Magnus’s comfortable house at the other houses and buildings slowly climbing skyward as Craftsmen’s Corridor once had. Lucretia pauses her discordant rhythm and finally raises the glass of lemonade, half melted ice cubes clinking together in the drink, to take a sip.

“All right. Spill it, Lucy,” Magnus declares, clapping his hands to his knees, leaning toward her.

Lucretia startles, almost inhaling her lemonade, and looks to him. “Spill... the lemonade?” She looks between him and the glass and raises one eyebrow. To be fair, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing he ever asked her to do.

“Lucy,” Magnus clicks his tongue in mock disapproval. “I know that something’s up. And you know that I know that something’s up. And obviously I know that you know that I know that something’s up. So. What is up?”

Lucretia snorts, this time intentional. “Perceptive as always, Mags.”

“I have proficiency in that!”

“No, you don’t.” An affectionate smile crosses Lucretia’s face, and, not for the first time, Magnus wonders how she managed to conceal the truth, how she managed to seal off her own heart so completely that the truth of her love for her family had never broken through.

Perhaps it was knowing that it would not and could not be returned.

“No, I don’t,” Magnus admits. “But I could!” And Lucretia laughs and Magnus joins in, and the laughter fills the small kitchen, billowing out over the kitchen table, crashing into the still newly painted cabinets and counters. It overflows, passing through the two doorways into the house beyond and through the large open windows, spilling into the breeze passing over all of Raven’s Roost.

Eventually, Lucretia stops laughing and Magnus with her. She looks tense again, and her gaze falls on the carefully wrapped canvas she’d brought, which she’d just as carefully placed on the counter while Magnus had been pouring drinks and not-so-carefully carving out slices of baklava. Magnus looks over as well, curiosity welling. It’s a painting, of course it is, and one of Lucretia’s own no doubt. But why would she be worried about it?

Slowly, Lucretia rises and walks the few feet to the counter. And for once, rather than rushing in, Magnus waits. She stands between Magnus and painting and undoes the wrapping. Before she lifts it or turns, she exhales. “Just... know that this was meant to be yours far sooner.”

Lucretia fluidly turns, the painting already carefully in her grasp, and Magnus sees the full of what Lucretia has done.

It’s Magnus. But not just Magnus. Magnus, and Julia, and Steven, and other dear friends, lost to... lost to that day and to time and to grief. At the center of the painting is Magnus and Julia, painted in perfect detail, joyous and loving and emerging from under the cover of a gazebo that Magnus had built himself.

It’s a painting of Magnus and Julia’s wedding day.

Magnus can’t breathe. No, Magnus just _isn’t_ breathing, spellbound, frozen in this moment as the couple in the painting is frozen in time, heedless of what lies ahead. Magnus should probably breathe, he realizes, and he takes a gasping breath, his lungs welcoming the return of fresh air, dancing inward through the window on the breezes of Raven’s Roost.

“Where did you... how did you... you were there?” Magnus asks, forcing out a single complete question from the rising tides of so many feelings.

“Yes. We both were. Of course I was there... I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

“But you... I didn’t know you. I didn’t remember.” Magnus’s mind is whirling, thinking back, trying to piece together the smallest of details, looking for an unfamiliar face with a loving smile in a haze of time-muddled smiling faces.

“But I did.” But no, Magnus can’t remember, can’t remember anyone with the same look on their face that Lucretia is wearing now. “So I was there.”

“Now hold on! You could have said hello!” He says, half indignant.

“And have you try to set me up with your father-in-law?” Lucretia asks dryly.

“Steven is great!”

“I know. I could say that, I could say you might have recognized Davenport or me later, but those are excuses. Saying hello, saying anything really... I think that would have been too much. I was selfish, and I stayed at a distance.”

“I don’t think that was selfish.” Magnus pauses, thinking. “How long have you had this?”

Magnus can see as tension creeps its way back into the set of Lucretia’s shoulders and jaw. “I started the next day. I wanted to make sure I remembered.”

“The next... the next day.” Years. Lucretia has had this scene, this day that Magnus has seen twice (once in life, once by his Relic), illustrated in as perfect detail as he can remember, the sands of the hourglass exactly as they had fallen.

“Magnus, I- I wanted to give it to you. A private, belated wedding present. As soon as I could. And I was going to. But then...” Lucretia trails off, biting her lip, struggling to see the story to its tragic end.

Naturally, Magnus knows where this story is going. After all, it’s his own. “But then everything, everyone was gone.” But then Julia was gone and much of Magnus with her.

“Yes. And then. Well, as you said, you didn’t remember. I couldn’t give it to you at the Bureau, not when it could raise so many questions. And after, after all of it... there was never going to be a good time. There was only soon.”

“I know.” Magnus stands, taking far more care in the action than he would normally. He approaches both Lucretia and painting, almost not seeing the former for the latter. Julia looks so happy. Happy and beautiful and full of life and love and hope for the life they had earned.

“I’m sorry, Magnus. I thought I put you in the best place, but... it all went wrong. You were in love. You had a family.”

“Am. And do.” Magnus corrects, abrupt but still gentle, looking up to Lucretia. Her expression is worried and wary. Nope. Magnus isn’t gonna have that. “And part of that is because you put me in the best place, Lucy. For all that happened... I don’t know that I would have ever found Julia, if what happened hadn’t happened, and... I lost Julia once. I can’t imagine not having had her in my life at all.” Magnus cautiously takes the painting from Lucretia and sets it back on the counter. “So, weird as it might sound, and I know, I know it might sound pretty fucking weird... thank you, Lucretia. And thank you for this.” And Magnus envelops Lucretia in a hug, as he’s done countless times before and still far too infrequently in recent years.

“You’re welcome, Magnus. For the painting.” There’s a shaky note to Lucretia’s voice that Magnus knows, one of tears rising.

“Uh-huh. You know, I notice you didn’t include a frame with it,” Magnus says, gently teasing, laughter in his own voice.

And Lucretia laughs as well, a watery laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. “I guessed that a master carpenter such as yourself would have exacting standards for such a painting.”

“Well yeah! That’s my wife in that painting! And you painted it! There’s only one master carpenter good enough for the job!”

“Oh, I see. I think we could probably find some way to take it to Legato, yes,” Lucretia teases back.

“Now hold on! I meant me!”

“I know.” Lucretia steps back and so does Magnus. The pair turn to look at the painting. “I would have liked to meet her. Really meet her, you know.”

“Oh, you will. One day. ‘Cause I’m gonna see her again, and she’s gonna get to meet everyone. And I know she’ll like you too.”

“Thank you, Magnus.” And for once it’s Lucretia, not Magnus, rushing in. Into another hug.

Magnus hangs the painting in his house, in a place where he can see it, crying or smiling or perhaps both, each day. And, some decades later, when a loving couple welcomes Lucretia into a cottage on an island in an endless sea, she looks up to see that same painting hanging on the wall.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> You know when an idea won't leave you alone so you write the first draft in the space of 45 minutes on your phone at 6 am when you're trying to fall asleep. This is that fic!
> 
> Kudos and comment to feed your local lich; subscribe and head to [charmandhex](https://charmandhex.tumblr.com/) for future shenanigans.


End file.
